Decoder Ring Theatre

You heard me, I said Guest of Honor. That's what a certain Decoder Ring Theatre Chief Bottle-Washer will be at this year's MuseCon - "A weekend-long convention for artists, musicians, inventors, gadgeteers, makers, tinkerers, and creative people of all ages" taking place at the Westin Chicago Northwest, Itasca, IL on August 3 - 5, 2012! A certain Flying Squirrel will also be around, mostly kid-wrangling while I do three panel sessions, but it's all a good time. So if you're anywhere near Chicago or can arrange to be so -

If you've been waiting with baited breath for the Hard-boiled event of the season, it's finally here! Black Jack Justice, the new mystery novel highlighting the very first meeting of a certain pair of his&hers private detectives, is here at last. Here's what some folks are saying (all taken from Amazon user reviews)

"This book reads like a hard-boiled detective novel written by the masters themselves, assuming the masters of the genre were 50% sassy femme fatale.

The story unfolds like a proper mystery, with enough twist to make any fan of mystery novels happy; but keeps a light zappy level to it's prose and especially it's dialogue that makes it a joy to read. The characters are well defined, and the universe they find themselves in well described and easy to picture while reading.""Jack meets Trixie, Trixie meets Jack and a lifelong antipathy is born. Sam Spade has a better secretary; Phillip Marlowe has a better car; and Mike Hammer has... well best not mentioned here; but none of them has the wit, humour, and banter of Black Jack Justice.""This book surprised me by being even better than Decoder Ring Theater's Black Jack Justice podcasts, and they are excellent. If you like detectives, like Crumley's Sughrue, you'll like Black Jack. Without losing the humor that helps make the podcasts so great, the novel format lets the reader see the dark/hard side of Black Jack in a way that the podcasts usually don't.

If course, if you are a fan of Decoder Ring Theater's Black Jack Justice podcasts, you will love this book. The story of how they came to work together is great, and the book is written so that you can practically hear Black Jack and Trixie reading the story to you. It is a must-read for every Black Jack Justice fan."So what are you still waiting for? Get your copy HERE

We've started in on a process that I've been toying with for quite some time, refreshing some of our older episodes from way back in the day. If fact, at time of writing, episodes 1-16 of the Red Panda Adventures have already gone through this "clean-up". There are a few reasons for this. Season One was, frankly, overcompressed. I had not yet found what I consider to be the best balance between sound quality and file size, and I didn't like having new listeners start out with those episodes. I also wanted to get the complete set consistently Tagged, and remove 5-year-old announcements and messages.

Plus, back in 2005, Libsyn recommended a rectangular "cover" embedded in the file, and today, of course, every display screen is square, so none of our artwork displays properly, and frankly it drives me a little nuts.

Some folks have expressed nostalgia for the old files, and I assume they've still got them, but with new folks finding their way here every day, it seemed silly to be filling their ears with old info. Each file will now have a standard Mid-Show message, somewhat truncated from the original. So yes, I am turning your old files into "classics" or "rarities" (if anything that's been downloaded 20,000 times and duplicated endlessly can possibly become "rare") - Sure to be collectors items!

But if you fancy a full set of the new files, there will be a few "new/old" Red Pandas a month until I'm caught up, and then I'll start in on Black Jack. Stay tuned!

If you haven't heard Red Panda Adventures #70 - The Wild West yet, you should listen before you look, 'cause this baby has some major spoilers, but it's a beauty. This special "lobby card" was done for us by Thomas Perkins, who did the cover for Tales of the Red Panda: The Android Assassins. You can get a super high-rez version on the members page... or you could just share and enjoy this one, which is pretty darn nice too!

This has been quite a season... first the Parsec Award, then the Podcast Award and now the very first Pulp Ark Award! That's right folks, if you have been waiting to pick up the all-new pulp fiction adventures of the Red Panda and the Flying Squirrel until they could accurately be called "Award Winning", then wait no longer! Tales of the Red Panda: The Android Assassins has won Best Book and Best Cover Art in the 2011 Pulp Ark Awards! A picture of the shiny plaque will follow... and congrats to Thomas Perkins for winning with his fantastic cover art!